OTTAWA --- A major B.C. labour organization denounced on Monday the “mass importation” of Chinese workers to mine coal in the northeast part of the province, saying it is “preposterous” to suggest British Columbians don’t have the skills to fill close to 2,000 full-time jobs destined for foreign workers.

“We want to register our grave concerns about the uses and abuses of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program as it relates to projects in British Columbia,” the organization told Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Christy Clark in an open letter.

It was issued by the Bargaining Council of the B.C. Building Trades Unions, made up of 15 unions representing 35,000 craft construction workers, including underground miners.

“We believe this mass importation of labour is completely unnecessary and is simply a strategy to employ lower-paid workers who are compliant with the culture of coal mining in China,” wrote BCBCBTU President Mark Olsen.

“The coal mining in that country is patently unsafe and the industry there shows little regard for the life, health and well-being of the workers in that country.”

The organization was reacting to the disclosure in The Vancouver Sun that a consortium of companies, mostly Chinese, are planning to bring anywhere from 1,600 to just under 2,000 Chinese nationals to B.C. in coming years to work in four proposed underground mine projects.

Permits under the TFW program have already been issued to 201 Chinese nationals to work in the most advanced of the four, the Murray River project near Tumbler Ridge, which is at the environmental review stage.

It is slated to begin full production in 2015. The other three projects are at various stages of development and have many more hurdles to overcome before becoming operational.

The TFW program brought in just over 190,000 workers to fill jobs in Canada in 2011, including roughly 46,000 in B.C. Companies usually must show in advance that they can’t find the workers inside Canada before they can seek TFW permits.

The president of Canadian Dehua International Mines Ltd., a Vancouver-based company working with Chinese firms in all four projects, said last week the companies had no option but to hire experienced Chinese workers, since most Canadian coal mines are open-pit operations.

“Using foreign works is an expensive choice as the employer has to provide full transportation accommodation, which costs employer much more than hiring local Canadians,” Naishun Liu told The Vancouver Sun.

He said the mine will have bilingual interpreters and well-qualified supervisors in accordance with Canadian standards.

“Our goal is to ensure the foreign workers earn the wage no lower than Canadian workers,” Liu wrote

The controversial TFW program has brought together an unusual alliance of unions and the NDP on the left, and some right-of-centre critics writing for the conservative Fraser Institute.

They say Canadian companies should be training Canadians rather than bringing in low-wage labour.

Olsen said B.C. unions are already familiar with frequent abuses of the program in major construction projects, with foreign workers often earning the province’s minimum wage after various expenses are deducted.

He also said unionized workers are capable of learning how to operate the equipment the Chinese companies operating the mines say they will import from China.

But Olsen said employers are advertising jobs with “low-ball” wages, then turning to the federal government to approve TFW permits because Canadians don’t take those jobs.

The China Mine Disaster Watch, a website kept by the U.S. Mine Rescue Association, says there were more than 50,000 coal mine deaths in the 2001-2011 period. But deaths have declined over that time, from a high of 6,995 in 2002 to 1,973 last year.

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